Prawn Laksa
This is a south east Asian dish that apparently is very big down under! It is effectively a street food dish and you kind of need to fore go your inhibitions a bit about messy eating when you dig in but hey! Food is about passion and sometimes passion gets messy (did I really just type that? – I bet it doesn’t make it through the final edit.)
This recipe can be used for fish, chicken or vegetables, what ever you want, and the quantities are pretty flexible too.
So anyway, Prawn Laksa. This looks like a lot of ingredients and the quantity of spice used might cause you to question my judgement, but as the spice is about flavour not necessarily heat, trust me, it works.
Right then, as you can see, I did this in a wok which works really well but a big pan will do just fine, the beauty of it is that it is a one pot dish so very little washing up!
Ingredients. – serves 4 as a main – 6 as a starter
2 tbsp vegetable oil (do not use olive oil, its too strong in flavour for this dish)
2 onions, finely chopped.
4 tablespoons (yes tablespoons!) of Suffolk Spice Company Laksa spice – a standard packet you would buy from me at the market really, remember this will feed 4, or maybe even 6 as a starter.
2 tins of coconut milk.
400 ml of stock, that could be fish, chicken or vegetable depending upon your core ingredient (or what you have available – I utilised homemade chicken stock here with my prawns and it was fine.)
2 tsp fish sauce (nam pla)
300 – 400g Prawns. Now these can be frozen, fresh, raw, cooked it doesn’t matter, its about what you have to hand. I used a pack of fresh, cooked king prawns. It’s up to you, but if you use frozen, defrost them first and if you use fresh, de-vein them before use.
2 heads of Pak choy chopped up
1 pack of small chestnut mushrooms quartered
300g of rice noodles – I used precooked here but again, it’s up to you.
300g of bean sprouts
2 tbsp of fresh mint – roughly chopped
2 tbsp of fresh coriander – roughly chopped.
2 limes quartered for serving.
Method
Put the oil in the wok on a medium heat and let it warm up. Add the onions and sauté until transparent but not too coloured, about 2 minutes. Add the spice, mix well with the onion for about a minute to make a thick paste and then add the coconut milk, stock and fish sauce. Bring the mixture to the boil and then reduce the heat to a simmer for 10 minutes. Stir regularly. Add the prawns, pak choy and mushrooms and simmer for a further 5 minutes until the prawns and the vegetables are cooked.
To serve, divide the cooked rice noodles and a good hand full of bean sprouts between 4 deep serving bowls and then ladle the Laksa over the top. Scatter the mint and coriander over the dish and add a wedge of lime for squeezing. Done!
If you have any left, it will keep in the fridge for a quick lunch the following day.
Yum yum